Ya’ know, middle school can be complicated. There’s a lot going on in these minds and bodies. This amazing short and inspiring feature film both capture how some middle schoolers are trying to figure it all out.

ZERO GRAVITY follows a diverse group of middle-school students from San Jose, CA, who compete in a nationwide tournament to code satellites aboard the International Space Station. Does Rhode Island have a middle school that participates? Join us to ask the director, Thomas Verette in a live (virtual) Q&A on February 25th at 11:00am. To sign up go to Reel Connections link on our home page.

Y’ALL R REAL ONES: U.S. Premiere! A rare glimpse into the daily lives of early adolescents in one public middle school in New York City and a glorious reminder of what school can be when everyone is together — featuring an ensemble of diverse tweens and faculty members who embrace the messiness of these joyous years. (2021 / 10 mins / USA / dir. Camilla Calamandrei / in English / ages 10+)

An explosive video goes viral, showing a white school resource officer in South Carolina pull a Black teenager from her school desk and throw her across the floor. An outraged nation divides over who is at fault and what role race played in the incident. Healer-Activist Vivian Anderson uproots her life in NYC and moves to South Carolina to help the girl and dismantle the system behind the “Assault at Spring Valley,” including facing the police officer.

To contextualize this incident, geographer Janae Davis treks the surrounding swamps to unearth the overgrown and neglected homes of formerly enslaved people of African descent, drawing a throughline connecting trauma from the past to the present. Against the backdrop of racial reckoning and its deep historical roots, one incident illuminates a persistent American power structure.

Much like the nation at large, the arresting officer and the girl thrown from the desk have starkly different perspectives of what happened. Through intimate verité footage and extensive interviews with both, a hidden truth is unearthed about what actually happened that day. Throughout the film, select scholars, historians, and experts provide further context to the story, as well as an examination of race, school discipline, and police accountability.

Ambitious young soccer players from China, Brazil, the United States, Palestine, and Norway have been training for months to take part in the Norway Cup, a top-level international tournament. With rapid-cut editing and an uplifting soundtrack, the film follows several of these players—all about 14 years old—from their home country, where they train for the last time and pack their bags, to the Norwegian capital Oslo, where they settle into in their lodgings, play matches, and hang out with teammates. We see them talking with their parents, trainers, and friends, and grabbing their chance to shine on the field.

But it’s not only about winning or losing in this chronologically structured documentary. All these teenagers have arrived with their own social and cultural baggage, and some are worried about their family or the situation back home. Friendships deepen, euphoria alternates with disappointment, and there are raging hormones and inevitable moments of defiance. Each teen’s story is their own, but they’re all part of the collective tension and excitement of this massive event.

HELLO WORLD (Hei Verden) is a coming-of-age story told by four gay kids, becoming teenagers in Norway. What do teenagers experience the first years after they have revealed their secret? When you are the first one to be open, who are you going to kiss? How do you start to fall in love but don’t know anyone who is gay like you?

Through three years, this documentary follows the lives of four teenagers who are the first ones to be openly gay in their schools. They are 12 and 13 years old when their stories begin. Do things change for the better?

This stunning documentary explores lighthouses across New England (including in Rhode Island) and the sadly decaying condition of many of them. Many abandoned lighthouses haven’t been tended to in decades or since they were replaced by updated tools of navigation. Director Rob Apse captures the beauty of these American sentinels that once defined a nation’s coastline. The Last Lightkeepers highlights stories of individuals currently fighting to preserve these structures while capturing their folklore before the lights go dim forever.

PCFF Winner Audience Choice Award Best Documentary 2020

Microplastic Madness is an inspirational and optimistic take on the local and global plastic pollution crisis as told through an urban youth point of view with a powerful take action message.

Fifth graders from PS 15 in Red Hook, Brooklyn -a community on the frontline of climate change that was severely impacted by Superstorm Sandy- spent 2 years investigating plastic pollution. Taking on the roles of citizen scientists, community leaders, and advocates, these 10-11-year-olds collect local data, lead community outreach, and use their impressive data to inform policy, testifying and rallying at City Hall. They take a deep dive into the root causes of plastic pollution, bridging the connection between plastic, climate change, and environmental justice before turning their focus back to school. There they take action to rid their cafeteria of all single-use plastic, driving forward city-wide action and a scalable, youth-led plastic-free movement.

With stop-motion animation, heartfelt kid commentary, and interviews of experts and renowned scientists who are engaged in the most cutting edge research on the harmful effects of microplastics, this alarming, yet charming narrative, conveys an urgent message in user-friendly terms with a take action message to spark youth-led plastic-free action in schools everywhere.

PCFF WINNER 2021 Audience Choice Award: Best Feature Documentary

When filmmaker Suzanne Crocker suggests that her family spend a year eating only locally sourced food, her husband and three teenagers are skeptical. What complicates this experiment is that the family lives in a remote Yukon town, less than 300 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle—not exactly an easy place to access fresh-grown food all year round. First We Eat follows Suzanne and her family as they hunt, forage, fish, grow and raise their own food, struggling along the way to create a meal plan with variety and flavor. In perhaps the most bizarre effort to inject some seasoning into her cooking, Suzanne even dries human blood to use as salt. Filmed primarily by the director herself, this challenging look at food security and sustainability is also an intimate study of a family in the midst of a tough but rewarding experiment.

Beauty on the Wing: Life Story of the Monarch Butterfly is a 56-minute narrated film that unfolds along the shores of Cape Ann to the heart of Mexico’s forested volcanic mountains. Every stage of the butterfly’s life cycle is experienced in vibrant close-up, from mating to egg to caterpillar to adult, and set against the backdrop of sea and forest, sun and wind.

By the millions the intrepid Monarchs journey thousands of miles. The most magical thing is that this migration happens in our midst, unfolding in backyards, farms, meadows, and along the shoreline, wherever milkweed and wildflowers grow.

No other butterflies in the world journey thousands of miles over such a vast area. Monarchs do not see borders, religion, ethnicities, or political differences. They are a symbol of unity, ecologically linking Canada and Mexico, and nearly every region within the United States.

The Monarchs are in great peril. Although the butterfly’s spectacular migration evolved over millennia, the last decades of human activity have put this phenomenon in grave danger. Beauty on the Wing is a film for all ages, created to instill a deeper understanding of the symbiotic relationship between habitats, wildflowers, and pollinators, and the vital role they play in our interconnected ecosystems.

Filmed in Gloucester, Massachusetts and the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserves at Estado de México and Michoacán, the film illuminates how two regions, separated by thousands of miles, are ecologically interconnected.

2016 Festival Flashback!! Five years ago we invited this thought-provoking documentary to our festival. With the situation in the Middle East still far from resolution, this film speaks volumes about the hurdles people face to live in peace.

ALMOST FRIENDS is a documentary about two Israeli girls—an Arab and a Jew—who live only 40 miles away but in many ways live worlds apart. Participating in an online program that fosters educational exchange and friendship, the two girls correspond with caution and eventually meet face-to-face. The experience is profoundly moving for them, their families, and the audiences who see this touching film. But when conflict spans generations, change is slow and “almost” anything might be a start…

 

“​Microplastic Madness – Brooklyn kids take on plastic pollution” is an inspirational and optimistic take on the local and global plastic pollution crisis as told through an urban youth point of view with a powerful take action message.

Fifth graders from PS 15 in Red Hook, Brooklyn -a community on the frontline of climate change that was severely impacted by Superstorm Sandy- spent 2 years investigating plastic pollution. Taking on the roles of citizen scientists, community leaders, and advocates, these 10-11 year olds collect local data, lead community outreach, and use their impressive data to inform policy, testifying and rallying at City Hall. They take a deep dive into the root causes of plastic pollution, bridging the connection between plastic, climate change, and environmental justice before turning their focus back to school. There they take action to rid their cafeteria of all single-use plastic, driving forward city-wide action and a scalable, youth-led plastic-free movement.

With stop-motion animation, heartfelt kid commentary, and interviews of experts and renowned scientists who are engaged in the most cutting edge research on the harmful effects of microplastics, this alarming, yet charming narrative, conveys an urgent message in user-friendly terms with a take action message to spark youth-led plastic free action in schools everywhere.

 

 

USA  / 2019  / 75 min / All Ages